Dissappointing Chicago trip

Well, our trip to RUSH didn't go as well as we would have liked. The first appointment on Thursday went fine - we met with a slew of doctors and asked all the questions we could think of. First, Dr. Polley, the cranial surgeon, came in and we liked him a lot. He agreed with Dr. Figueroa that Aiden looks like a more mild to moderate case. His recommendation for treatment includes watching Aiden's soft spot on his forehead and if it starts to get smaller rapidly, then that is when they would do the first cranial surgery to open the suture. If it stays wide open as it is now, then they recommend waiting for surgery until it seems to become a problem. This allows Aiden to get bigger, in turn making anesthesia less risky as well as making it less likely that he would need to have additional surgeries later.

The part we weren't too pleased with was the meeting with the plastic surgeon, Dr. Derman. We were asked to get there an hour earlier than our scheduled appointment time of 9 am so that he could see Aiden prior to his regular day of scheduled patients. So we arrived at 7:30 for our 8 am appt. but were not seen until 8:40 because, as the nurse told us, "Dr. Derman swims every morning". Now, he seems like a good enough doctor, and I'm sure he is, but he looked at the x-rays we brought from Kleinert and Kutz here in Louisville for a brief 30 seconds or so before announcing that Aiden has 4 fingers and a thumb on each hand, but that on one hand it looks like he only has 3 finger bones from the middle part up to the tip. He then launched into how they would do surgery to make him have 3 fingers instead of 4 and how they wouldn't sacrifice function for fingers (meaning they wouldn't try to make 4 if it wouldn't be functional). I had to stop him and ask him why multiple doctors have seen Aiden, and 2 different sets of xrays, and this was the first we heard of this discovery. He hemmed and hawed and relooked at the xrays (for another brief 30 seconds or so) and said that yes, maybe the bones were overlapped and he couldn't tell. I suggested getting another round of xrays before he made such a conclusion. He agreed. He also said that doing any surgery on Aiden's feet to separate the toes is typically considered "a hassle". I could tell Ricky wanted to launch into him right then and there, but we just finished our appt. without letting our emotions get the best of us. When the Dr. left the room, Ricky had his mind made up. I was trying to keep an open mind, but it didn't take me long to agree that Dr. Derman would not be operating on Aiden.

We were hoping that we were going to leave Chicago this trip with a good feeling and that we could decide that this was the right place for Aiden to be treated - from head to toe (literally!) However, now we are hoping that our trip to Dallas May 15 will atleast allow us to split his treatment between Dr. Polley (RUSH) for the cranial surgeries and Dr. Fearon (Dallas) for the hand and feet surgeries. If we are completely blown away by Dr. Fearon, then we will also consider doing all of his surgeries in Dallas.

On a lighter note, Aiden was a perfect little traveler during his first of many flights. He nursed during takeoff, slept, then nursed during landing. I'm sure that while in the terminal, we were those people with the baby that nobody wanted to get stuck next to, but he didn't make a peep! Of course the flight to Chicago is only 55 minutes - we'll have to see how he does on the much longer flight to Dallas!